Martin was born in South London in 1908. He claimed to have started work at 13, and spent time in various countries, working as a cowboy, gold prospector, and wild-horse trader, among numerous other occupations. During the Second World War he lived in Nottingham, working for the Ambulance Service. He began writing full-time after the war, publishing his first novel in 1949 under the name "Hank McCoy". He went on to write more novels, all Westerns, over the next few years under the names "Scott Martin", "Tex Bancroft", "Brett Cameron", "Buck Savage" and "Burt Merrill", and also a science fiction novel The Wheel in the Sky, published in 1954, under the name "Rafe Barnard". In 1953 he began writing novels for children, starting with the "Pocomoto" series of westerns as "Rex Dixon", then the "Kemlo" science fiction series as "E. C. Eliott", and the "Joey" and "Dance and Co." adventure series as "Robert Martin". He also wrote spin-off novels, short stories, non-fiction books, and ghost-wrote several novels published under the names of well-known sportsmen. He died in Haywards Heath, Sussex, in 1971.[1]